


if the world was ending (you'd come over right?)

by sassy_ninja



Category: Haikyuu!!
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Alternate Universe - Ghosts, Ambiguous/Open Ending, Angst, Haikyuu!! Manga Spoilers, M/M, Married Couple, Past Character Death, Pining, Requited Unrequited Love, Reunions, but it's not who you expect
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-09-10
Updated: 2020-09-10
Packaged: 2021-03-06 17:13:47
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,561
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26382442
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sassy_ninja/pseuds/sassy_ninja
Summary: In the empty shell of the Aoba Johsai gymnasium, Oikawa Tooru waits for Iwaizumi for the last time. He knows he'll come, even after ten years he never loses faith. Iwaizumi is like the tides, no matter how far out the sea goes, so far that you can't even see it anymore, it will always return, day after year after year until the land falls back into the sea. And so Tooru waits, with all the certainty of a pebble on a beach that his Iwaizumi will come back to him one last time.
Relationships: Iwaizumi Hajime/Oikawa Tooru, Iwaizumi Hajime/Original Male Character(s)
Comments: 10
Kudos: 39





	if the world was ending (you'd come over right?)

**Author's Note:**

> honestly I'm not too sure what this is but it's definitely something! umm idk this is just vaguely sad vaguely something else but uuuh idk I haven't been writing a lot lately bc of health reasons mixed with a big case of writer's block so have this instead? aah idk.... I was working on something big but I decided I liked it too much and am now making it a piece of original writing so oop. also I just feel like I got too reliant on getting praise for my writing on here rather than how good it actually is but also I crave validation so ummm ha fuck me ig!!

Tooru slumps against the wall of the gym, it’s dark, empty. He wonders how long it’s been since someone last played volleyball in here, since anyone’s been in here at all. If he closes his eyes he can almost hear the sound of the ball bouncing, his own breath, the quiet whirring of the overhead lights, it’s like nothing ever changed at all, but then he opens his eyes again. He can see the night sky where the ceiling has rotted through and collapsed onto the court, it’s cloudy – he can barely see a sliver of the moon.

“Oikawa,” a voice comes through the darkness, so familiar that he can’t help but lift his head and smile.

“Iwa-chan,” he calls back, settling down on the ground and waiting for Iwaizumi to come find him. It doesn’t take him long, picking his way through the collapsed door and he pauses for a moment when he sees what the gym looks like now, there’s a flash of something on his face that’s not quite pain.

“What’re you doing here, idiot? It’s not safe – it’s gonna collapse any day now,” he scolds and Tooru doesn’t reply, just shakes his head.

The years have been kind to Iwaizumi, he’s grown into his broad shoulders and in the semi-darkness Tooru can just make out the start of laugh lines around his eyes. He looks kind, settled, so sure of himself – he looks like he carries the world on his shoulders and does so with pride. It makes Tooru ache to see him like this, to see what he was able to do without him by his side.

“I’m sorry I couldn’t make it to your wedding,” he says and Iwaizumi looks at him, blinks like he doesn’t quite know what to say to that, “I’m sure it was beautiful.”

“It’s alright. I don’t blame you, you know,” Iwaizumi tries to smile, but there’s something trembling behind it. He touches his ring on instinct and his hand flinches away when he realises, almost guilty, “it took me a long time, but I’m not angry now – not anymore.”

He settles down onto the ground next to Tooru, easily crossing his legs just like they used to do in high school and he looks across the ruined gymnasium. There’s a new one where the current Seijoh volleyball team practice, only twenty minutes away from here. It’s state of the art, has its own gym facilities, attached changing rooms, swimming pool, but it’s not the same. Not for Tooru, not for Iwaizumi as well.

He glances over, looks at the bold line of Iwaizumi’s nose in the moonlight and wonders why he’s here, why after all these years. He doesn’t want to ask though, if he asks maybe he’ll leave and Tooru wants nothing more than for him to just stay.

“You were still angry though,” he says so quiet that at first he thinks Iwaizumi didn’t hear.

He just shakes his head, slow and tired, “I wasn’t angry at you I was just – I was angry at everything else. I mean maybe I was a little angry at you – how hard is it to look both ways when you cross the road, goddamnit,” he gives a small wet laugh and presses the heel of his palm into his eyes like if he pushes hard enough the tears won’t come out.

Tooru doesn’t know what he should say, he wants to reach over and pull his hands away, wipe away his tears, hold him and tell him how sorry he is, what an idiot he’s always been. He’s never wanted to hurt him, no matter what he’s never wanted to hurt Iwaizumi ever, but somehow he’s managed to do that a whole lot.

“You couldn’t have picked a nicer place to haunt, could you?” Iwaizumi says after a long while and Tooru laughs, shakes his head – this was the only place he wanted to be. Somehow weirdly even after all those years, this was the first thing that came to his head when he thought about safety, about home.

“I’m sorry, Iwa-chan – I should’ve considered your convenience when my ghost was floating around the Otherworld,” he sneers back, but there’s no malice to it, no heat. It was already abandoned when he first arrived, all he did was scare off a few property developers who wanted to turn it into a block of flats. Now the gym is just here, just rotting, and Tooru sits here alone just waiting for it to collapse, wondering if that will the thing to set him free. He’s not alone now though, at least for a little bit.

They sit in silence again and Tooru wants to say something, it’s just that he’s not sure what anymore. It’s been so long and Iwaizumi has run so far ahead of him, he doesn’t know how to catch up anymore. It’s not awkward though, even now after so long it could never be awkward between them, but it’s just – well, not quite comfortable either.

“I was angry at myself mostly,” he says after a while and holds up a hand when Tooru opens his mouth to tell him how stupid that is, how it was never his fault, “you were calling me when it happened – and then I just kept on thinking about if I had just been a few minutes earlier, if I’d run for the train or walked a bit quicker – if I had just–” he catches himself before he can continue and shakes his head, “I know it’s pointless, but I – Tooru I never quite got over you.”

Tooru closes his eyes, curls in on himself. He was so happy before he died – he was back in Sendai, so was Iwaizumi, they had plans to meet up that afternoon and then he’d gotten the call from his agent to say that he’d had a place in the Argentinian national team. It felt golden, that moment, like he was invincible. He didn’t even hesitate to call Iwaizumi, it felt like somehow after all those years of struggling, at twenty-five, everything was finally falling into place.

It wasn’t even completely his fault, that’s the thing. He’d walked onto the road, didn’t hear the car because he was on the phone, but they would have seen him if they weren’t driving so fast, way too fast for a residential area. Two mistakes and Tooru ended up sprawled out onto the tarmac. He got up afterwards, went to the hospital and they gave him the all clear, just a few cuts and bruises and two hours later the bleeding in his brain killed him as he was boiling water for tea.

_Ah_ , he had thought as his vision blurred and his legs fell out beneath him, _I wanted to see Hajime one more time, at least one more time before I go._ He had died before that could happen and barely an few minutes later Hajime had been the one to break down his front door and find his body. He remembers seeing it distantly like he was watching through someone else’s eyes.

“I came here because of you,” Tooru says distantly, he can feel it calling him away, stronger now, but he needs to stay – he needs to stay with Hajime, “it was the last place we were together all the time. After Seijoh I went to Argentina, you were in America. I just wanted to see you again, that was my last wish.”

“Well, I’m here, now aren’t I?” he asks, a little desperately and Tooru smiles, leans his head onto his shoulder and feels the solid warmth against his cheek for the last time.

“Only took you ten years, Hajime,” he teases and closes his eyes. It’s alright, he would have waited for longer, forever if it had come to that, but Hajime is here now and that’s all that matters. Tooru is finally safe, finally home.

* * *

“Hajime?” a voice echoes through the abandoned building and he snaps his head up. His name feels slightly wrong when he hears it, not the way Oikawa would say it on the rare times that he did. It’s drawling, extended, American, but he blinks again and thinks that he shouldn’t really think that the way his husband says his name is wrong.

“I’m over here,” he calls back, standing up and brushing the dust off his jeans. His back is stiff from sitting in the same position for so long and he feels a long pang of something for the youth that he’s been slowly, slowly losing.

“Sorry, I got worried – you were in here so long, I thought maybe something might have fallen on you,” Matt laughs when he clambers through, “did you – did you find what you needed to?”

Hajime stares across the room, it feels different now, not like when he first stepped in and he could feel Oikawa’s stare pierce through him before he even saw him. He’s gone, at rest, whatever the hell they call it.

“I just – let’s go home,” he says, holding out his hand and Matt’s hands are soft, he’s never played volleyball in his life, he doesn’t particularly mind milk bread. He’s different and it’s okay because Hajime loves him in a different way too. They walk out of the empty gym together and nobody watches them go.

**Author's Note:**

> I hope u enjoyed and if u did pls leave me a comment and a kudo!! it would mean a lot to me!!


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